Parenting nightmare #857 - toddler vomit.

Before we had kids, Mr.P and I discussed how we would handle certain aspects of parenting. We made a gentlemens agreement that I would handle the really nasty poop incidences, and he would handle vomit. Not that either one sounded like fun, but I felt I was choosing the lesser of two evils. Somehow it hasn't really worked out...I guess as primary caregiver, I end up dealing with both the nasty poop and the vomit most of the time.

M2 had pretty bad reflux as a baby and spat up a lot. After about 6 months she stopped spitting up so much and became a drool monster. She was 20 months old the first time she ever really vomited during her first (and only so far, knock on wood) case of the stomach flu.

P5 also has had pretty bad reflux, which he had seemed to outgrow and quit taking medicine for around 6 months of age. However, his reflux has come back with a vengeance. Now that he is eating several small meals of solids each day, his spit up has graduated from a little bit of milk to full on vomit. Puddles of chunky smelly toddler vomit - exorcist style. That kid has a sensitive gag reflex, because once he gets going he just doesn't stop until his stomach is empty. It usually only happens at night, just before bed. At first it happened a couple times over a few week period, then it got to be every other day, and then every day. After 5 days of nightly vomit fests, I put him back on reflux medicine to see if it would help. It did - but only for a week. He's now back to the every other day nightly vomiting. I'd like to say I'm getting to be desensitized to it, but it still really grosses me out and requires a lot of time and energy to clean up. I've tried to be really careful about not overfeeding him, but even with small spaced out meals the vomiting persists.

I'm thinking we may need to pay the pediatrician a visit to see if he needs a stronger medicine, or if the vomiting could be caused by something else (he does tend to vomit if he eats eggs, which is why we're having him do allergy testing later this month). There's no real moral to the post, mostly just me complaining about how much it sucks to be barfed on multiple times per week. The end.